Benicia High junior starred as quarterback, pitcher

Editor's note: This is the last profile for the Times-Herald's Athlete of the Year candidates. The winners will be announced Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

In early September, Ryan Bohnet's junior sports season began with a thud, as the Benicia High School football team turned the ball over six times in an opening-season loss to Dublin.

By spring, Bohnet flirted with perfection ... and then found perfection.

He was the Times-Herald Athlete of the Week three times this school year, more than any other athlete. He is also a Times-Herald Athlete of the Year candidate.

Overall, Bohnet was one of the stars for the Panthers in football and baseball.

He threw for 2,486 passing yards, 27 touchdowns, and just nine interceptions out of Benicia's spread offense. On the baseball diamond, he was 7-1, with one save, and a 2.13 ERA over 49 1/3 innings.

He fired a no-hitter against Vanden on March 21 with the only base runner quickly erased on a pickoff play at first base. He then topped that with a six-inning, perfect game against Bethel on April 25.

Benicia baseball coach Jim Bowles said Bohnet has a similar routine before all of his starts.

"He has a very calm demeanor, which I really like," Bowles said. "A lot of pitchers will ask a lot of questions and get really antsy, but Ryan will wait for the pitching coach to come and get him. He is very professional in that way. He is mature beyond his years."

Ryan's dad, John, was a standout

baseball player at Hogan High School and was selected by the Cleveland Indians with the seventh overall pick in the 1979 draft.

John Bohnet made starts in the big leagues against the Mariners, Angels and White Sox after Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven went on the shelf with an elbow injury.

"I am sure he has had a good mentor in his dad. I am sure that goes a long way toward his personality," Bowles said. "This is the third Bohnet I've coached and he is by far the calmest."

Bohnet was not one of the Panthers' regular starting pitchers as a sophomore but he learned from watching aces Peter Reyes and Nathan Jenest. Reyes graduated and played at San Francisco State this season while Jenest was forced to shut it down with Tommy John Surgery as a senior.

Jenest, however, did provide a boost as kind of a player/pitching coach.

"He just gained a lot of confidence this year," said Jenest, who expects to pitch for Solano College next spring. "He just improved a lot physically too. He was just bound together this year."

While Hayden Mauch was the everyday catcher last season, the Panthers rotated between Hudson Bishop and Kyle Blakeman this season.

"In one sense, Bohnet is very easy to catch because he has great control," Bowles said. "On the other hand, he has a great slider and it has a ton of bite to it and that can give a catcher the most trouble. We had two young catchers this year but they handled him well."

Bowles said Bohnet is working on a straight changeup to go along with the fastball and slider. He said he expects him to hit 90 mph on the radar gun next season after being in the 85 to 87 range for most of this season.

Bohnet went into the football season replacing the Panthers' ultra-successful quarterback Andrew McNeece.

The tough outing against Dublin on Sept. 2 included 40 passes attempted, but just 20 of those completed. He turned the ball over four times, two interceptions and two fumbles.

"We had some dropped passes that game and he threw high and missed some passes," Benicia football coach Craig Holden said. "But Ryan is such a competitor. After that, he just let the game come to him."

Holden said he wasn't worried about Bohnet replacing McNeece, but Bohnet knew they were big shoes to fill.

"I actually felt a lot of pressure," Bohnet said in the fall. "He had two big back-to-back seasons. After that first game, it got to me."

From there, Bohnet was on fire. Over the next four games, he threw 12 touchdown passes and was intercepted just once. That included a five-touchdown game against Oakland Tech.

"We talked all year about him being his own player," Holden said. "They are different quarterbacks and Ryan actually has the stronger arm. Where they are both very similar is they are able to find the open receiver."

Bohnet was able to recognize the strength of the offense was running back Austin Carr, who led the Solano County Athletic League in rushing and receiving. He is a Times-Herald Athlete of the Year nominee too.

"We tried to get the ball to Austin as much as possible," Holden said. "Sometimes that was a bad idea if teams were quadruple-covering him, but Ryan was smart enough to find the other receivers."

Holden said he thought Bohnet's future sport in college is probably baseball, but he wouldn't rule out football either.

"Personally, I think he could do both if he wanted," Holden said. "He is only 6-foot-1 and a lot of the Pac-12 quarterbacks are around 6-4, 6-5 so some schools might devalue him because of that. But I think he could play football and baseball. Heck, he could play dodge ball if he wanted. He is just an amazing athlete."